“If man sees hazard as a misfortune rather than an opportunity, he will seek to close the door to freedom rather than keep it open. ”

“The man who begins to go to bed forty minutes before he opens his bedroom door is bored; that is to say, he is not living.”

“Strangman shrugged theatrically. "It might," he repeated with great emphasis. "Let's admit that. It makes it more interesting—particularly for Kerans. 'Did I or did I not try to kill myself?' One of the few existential absolutes, far more significant than 'To be or not to be?', which merely underlines the uncertainty of the suicide, rather than the eternal ambivalence of his victim." He smiled down patronisingly at Kerans as the latter sat quietly in his chair, sipping at the drink Beatrice had brought him. "Kerans, I envy you the task of finding out—if you can.”

“I guessed that he was one of those ambitious young physicians who more and more fill the profession, opportunists with a fashionable hoodlum image, openly hostile to their patients. My brief stay at the hospital had already convinced me that the medical profession was an open door to anyone nursing a grudge against the human race.”

“Life is rather like a tin of sardines - we're all of us looking for the key.”

“Surrender to a logic more powerful than reason. ”

“In a totally sane society, madness is the only freedom.”